


Dime Piece

by brittlelimbs



Series: Guidance 'Verse [2]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Daddy Kink, Implied Relationships, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-26
Updated: 2016-11-26
Packaged: 2018-09-02 09:31:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8662333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brittlelimbs/pseuds/brittlelimbs
Summary: “Your Papa. Does he make sure the Boo-gey Man isn’t under your bed? Does he kiss you good night and tuck you in?”   In which Credence has a little bit of a thing about fathers, and he's slightly too obvious about it. Outsider POV.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this takes place after the other stuff from guidance, but can definitely just be read as post-movie gradence with an established relationship. 
> 
> also, disclaimer. i don't live in new york. plz don't kill me thanks

Somewhere in New York, between 5th Street and Madison, there’s a bookstore next to a bakery. This bakery is Louise Fischer’s favorite one—the only one, really, that she knows of, though she pretends otherwise. Hank-down-the-street says she’s never been to the one that has the dark-glaze donuts, that she’s never been to a _real_ bakery before, but this simply isn’t true. This bakery has glory on display in their window case: pastries gelded with sweet glazes, pan-au-chocolat, fat little croissants and Danishes with the buttery fat folded right in so they glisten and wink at her. This afternoon, there’s a particularly crisp looking turnover tucked in the bottom right-hand corner of the case at perfect ogling height for her little-girl eyes, and she bites the inside of her cheek with longing. Jellyguts, peeking up through the flaky lattice, jeweled and crimson. She would kill for a nickel.

 

(Hank-down-the-street has a mean eye and a funny walk and doesn’t share with her or Lacey when they play kick-the-can between the apartments, so Louise has little faith in him, anyways.)

 

Louise is so busy with the turnover that she doesn’t notice the boy behind her until she almost pushes right into him, her back to his arm. She swivels, then has to crane her neck: an abstraction of dark, sharp shapes, jacket and jaw, a white collar, the woebegone edge of a mouth turned down in a pout. He’s taking a big step back as if spooked, disarmed completely for a moment; this is opportunity enough for Louise. She squints up at him.

“Excuse me. Do you have a nickel?”

 

 

“Sorry, little one,” he says, soft, hands tucking politely into his pockets. He can’t seem to meet her gaze very well. Chin keeps dipping, eyes keep jumping around.

“I’m just borrowing it,” says Louise. “I’ll give it right back, you can trust me. I just need it for a second.”

“I don’t have a nickel.”

“Okay, then a dime?”

“I have none.”

There’s a pause. Louise wipes her nose on the back of her sleeve. The man-boy is awkward, now; he gives her a curt little nod and hurries down the sidewalk with purpose before passing the bookstore and slowing, as if suddenly realizing his destination is much closer than he first thought. He looks up at the sign in the window, then something in his fist, then at the sign again.

With much unease, he takes a seat at one of the wrought-iron sidewalk tables outside, scraping the curly metal legs against the pavement. His spot affords him a clear view of the store’s front door and turns his back to Louise. She notices that the blunt, dark edge of his haircut is shaved a little crooked at his nape, like his barber did it poorly on purpose.

 

He looks at her with bewilderment as she clambers onto the chair opposite, but says nothing.

“Well, if you don’t have a nickel or a dime, either, I guess we should just both sit here. Nothing else to do,” she says.

He stares at her, then places his leather bookbag on the table, making it vibrate and shudder. It’s heavy.

“What's your name?’ She asks.

“Credence.”

“Funny name,” she says, to which Credence replies with concerted silence, picking at his cuticles.

A funny boy, too. Too big to be one, she reckons, but somehow, he’s just a boy anyways—he reminds her of Tobias, who’s too little, still, to walk anywhere without one hand on their mother’s leg and the other round the valiant, soft-worn Mister Bun. A shrinking kind of uncertainty that makes Louise, instantly, want to sister him.

“Where’s your Ma?” she asks, sternly.

“Don’t have one.”

“Oh.” This takes Louise a second to navigate, though Credence doesn’t seem to be crying about it, so she decides to persevere.

“Where’s your Pa?”

“Oh, well, I don’t—“ Credence swallows something, and it looks, for a second, like his eyes are watering. “Um. He’s in the bookstore.”

“What’s he doing in there?”

“Errands.”

Louise is relieved, for his sake, that his Pa is nearby.

“So he left you out here by yourself?”

“Yes?” There’s color in his voice.

Louise sighs; should’ve known he’d be fragile. “You just looked really lonely—that’s all.” She kicks his knee lightly under the table. “Sorry, _Credence_.”

There’s quiet, for a moment, and city fills in the gap: the breeze picks up, perfuming them with the sweet, yeasty scent of the bakery, and Louise’s stomach growls. Two young women pass, arm in arm, and burst into cackling hyena laughter at some unheard joke, their kitten heels clicking snidely on the sidewalk. Across the street, the loud bang of a car backfiring. Credence seems to take each of these sounds as a burden on his person, back steadily furling further and further, until he’s hunched sad over his bag like one of Louise’s puppet toys with all the strings cut off.

“Good Papas don’t leave their kids alone for too long,” she says, leaning in reassuringly.

He glances up, meeting her eyes for the first time. “Where’s yours, then?” he asks.

“Oh, about,” Louise waves her hand vaguely, with much importance. “He’ll be here soon and then we can walk home, and then Mama’s going to make chicken dinner and we’re going to eat it.” A pause. “Will yours get here soon, too?”

“Yes.”

“How can you be sure?”

“He told me so.”

Louise studies him, intently. “Your Papa. Does he make sure the Boo-gey Man isn’t under your bed? Does he kiss you good night and tuck you in?”

Credence nods, curling his chin towards his chest further and scrunching his shoulders up. “Yes. He does. I, we— we sleep in the same bed, actually,” he mutters.

Louise’s eyes bulge.

“Jealous!” She’s not; big girls don’t need to sleep in their mom and dad’s beds. But she thinks Credence might need to. “That’s really neat.”

She leans back, satisfied. “Then he’s a good Papa.”

“Yes, he is,” Credence agrees, quietly. His face is going gently pink, like he’s been in the bath too long.

“Mine’s better, but that’s alright. Yours can be second.”

Louise’s father is a clerk at a small-time bank who’s having an affair with the secretary in the office kitty-corner, but she doesn’t know this. It doesn’t matter; He’s her Pa, and that’s what does.

Credence’s lip twitches up, a little, a tiny motion that seems to come at great cost; Louise realizes that this is a smile. She beams.

 

“Who’s this?”

 

The voice is deep and she turns: there’s a man poised at the front stoop of the store, looking at her, all wooled-up and important-seeming in a long, angular coat that brushes down his calves. Three-piece suit kind of smart. He strides around Louise and right into Credence’s space, fine, burnished wingtips glinting beneath the whispering hem of his slacks, and he instantly fits into place, makes sense. _Father_ , from the lines around his mouth to the thick capableness of his steady hands as he fits his palm to his son’s cheek, and asks again, but quieter. _Who’s this?_ Credence can’t seem to manage anything more than a soft, inarticulate moan.

“This is Louise Fischer,” says Louise. “Nice to meet you. Are you Credence’s Papa?”

The man grips, just a little, at Credence’s jaw, pushes into the hollow of his cheek, contemplating it with the pad of his thumb, as if gauging the raw value of his skull. His mouth creases and it’s something covetous and self-satisfied and wanting, still, despite all odds; _Jellyguts,_ Louise thinks. Credence’s Papa is going to eat him up.

“Mmm-hmm,” he hums. “Yes, that’s right.”

Credence’s eyes look like they’re going to roll back in his head, for a second, then shutter closed as he’s manhandled to his feet, chair scraping back, unfolding his long legs, up, up. He quickly tangles his hand into the strange, slit sleeve of his Papa’s coat and sags in, suddenly, immensely relieved. Louise thinks of Tobias again.

 

“Thank you, Louise. For keeping my son company,” says the man says. “Credence. Your bag.” His voice is so sharp against the affection in his gaze, watching as his son scrambles to grab his book bag and hook it hastily over one shoulder, hardly daring to loose from the grip on his bicep. But perhaps affection is too light a word, for—that. Something Louise has no vocabulary for, yet, but whose eyes still see, keenly, setting her stomach worried and hands quick.

She waves after them as they turn away down the street in a flourish of the man’s coat, so close together as to make one huddled, dark silhouette.

“See you, mister! Goodbye, Credence.”

Movement on the table catches her eye: a tiny, crumpled slip of paper, quavering in the wake of their updraft. She scoops it up, all at once itchy and curious to any clue about these strangers, and makes out the name of the bookstore in tiny, perfect print. Credence’s hand.

Odd, like Hank, Louise thinks, pocketing the note, thinking of Credence’s sloped shoulders and the set of the man’s body around him. Like no Papa she’s ever seen, not like hers, not like Dorothy’s or Helen’s or Irene’s. Distinct, strange—

There’s a hard, cold weight in her pocket. She pulls out the nickel and it burns in her palm, sheeny-bright and fresh-minted and blinding,

 

She looks up, hunger at her lips, and the sidewalk is bare.


End file.
